Kate McGarrigle

One of the things I liked best about her was that wonderful sprawling musical artistic family or the myth of it, it turns out it was not the always Waltons-with-music life but more the complicated reality of families, careers, art, priorities. - Still - singing with her sister, the cousins, the children, yes. I grew up singing around a piano and breaking into a tune at the drop of a hat (although the only musical one now is cello-playing James). Her creative life was not just the songs but the whole of it, her family, the reality of it, a woman of my generation.